


The Storm

by QuantumFizzx



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, First Time, Nanda Parbat, not quite spec fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 23:56:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3747916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuantumFizzx/pseuds/QuantumFizzx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by the scenes in Arrow’s “Sacrifice” trailer. Felicity goes to Oliver on his last night before entering The League.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Storm

There is no life here. 

Nothing living. Desolate. Barren. 

She winds her way toward his room and if she weren’t so concerned with what he has to face, she’d be drowning in fears. 

There had been less and less of anything living as they’d traveled closer, as if animals had rumored of the danger. By the time they’d reached the entrance, it seemed plants long ago uprooted and collectively decided “Why bother?”

At first, it’d been almost funny. She hadn’t pictured Nanda Parbat being so similar to Petra in Jordan; she still half expected to take a wrong turn and be required to proceed crouched over in some version of “Only the Penitent Man May Pass.” 

Nanda Parbat is not just where things die, but where Death comes to rest on brittle bones. 

Outside, a storm makes empty threats. It rumbles, rolls in, and shakes its fist at impenetrable walls. Throughout history, it has tried, recycled itself and tried again, and still these pillars stand hidden in mountain shadows. It gets harder for her to hold onto hope that they will find a way; they are so small compared to nature and its fury.

But, still, she hopes on. 

She makes a wrong turn and is enveloped in musty dankness. She quickly backtracks. Flickering candlelight and crystals dangle and sway from decrepit lighting fixtures that occupy every labyrinthine hallway. The phrase “polishing a turd” seems apt.

A dark archer clone slinks past, pays her no heed. She should be grateful, but it feels more like an insult. Nothing but THE KILL matters here.

She is not the one scheduled to be erased here. 

She needs to see Oliver. Needs to make him see her. 

See himself. 

Thunder impotently rages outside. It can no more break past these barriers than it can convince the surrounding, scorched earth to flower.

Mistakenly, she opens a door that looks like Oliver’s, but instead is hit with a blast of acrid air. Steam and gurgling water makes it seem like a hothouse, but, what would live here, could grow in such a place? A place full of husks and vengeance disguised as purpose. 

Backing away, her footfalls come faster.

Flip book images fill her mind with that fern she’d so casually bought but she clamps them down, unwilling to consider its fate. One final corner and she sees what is surely his room. A puff of fresh rain mist blows in through an unseen opening, carried on wind from the approaching clouds, as if summoned to punctuate her thoughts. 

From the doorway, she sees him sitting pensive. Four fingers press flat against his lips. 

Wordlessly, he motions for her to join him. The room’s open balcony ushers out dank air. 

Now, it occurs to her she doesn’t really know what to say. Not that she’s let anything like that ever stop her before. 

“Nice place you’ve got here.” She gestures too broadly at the room. “Love what you’ve done with the place.” 

“It’s…it’s not exactly a basement full of lights and glass cases,” he says, glancing around as if noticing for the first time the copious candles and drapes in every hue of deep red. Then, flashing toward the door, toward where all these changes wait and scratch at the threshold. “Not such a good idea to wander this place alone.”

The air drifting in is anything but cool, but she shoves her hands inside her jacket. Forces a shrug, wishes it will seem more casual than she feels.

“Nothing here scares me,” she whispers looking out toward the downpour. “Nothing” does scare her, the idea of being even less. 

She can feel his gaze. “I’m not sure what I’m doing here right now,” she says.

He sighs and tries to smile. “I didn’t ask.”

Their eyes have one of their conversations. Because their eyes say everything, but sometimes the message doesn’t register. Words like You’d never have to ask and I’ll always come for you and I trust you…but not my heart.

The last look, however, is one she recognizes all too well: Self-flagellation. 

“Oliver, stop. You – you are not to blame.”

He sits back, weary exasperation pouring from him. “Everything I did, everything that happened has led me right here to this moment.”

“We will figure this out.” She tries to bring him back and clambers onto a garnet velvet ottoman, appreciating the effort he makes to appear pleased. He’s quiet. “This place, the League, Ra’s,” she practically spits the last word. “They won’t change you…can’t change who you are.”

He sags, like bags of wet sand tossed on an overburdened dam. She’s certain he’s thinking of The Bratva, and that it was a group, that it was different than this League. Different and same, but that he still changed. That he conformed, assimilated, took several steps closer toward ruthless. 

The League promises to be worse. She knows him enough to know he’s nearly convinced this has always been his fate.

“You’re not going to lose yourself, Oliver.”

He watches as she places a hand on his forearm. “This is not your fault. What happened is not your fault. You were dragged to this moment.” She squeezes. “And this place?” She forces her voice to be light. “Meh, it’s not so bad.”

He sighs and she thinks she hears a hint of a smile as he says under his breath, “Yeah, that’s my girl.”

Suddenly, very suddenly, it’s all it too much. What’s at stake. Their past. Their almost. The nights, so many nights, worrying over the comms - and she won’t even have that now – and every single night _every single night _pulling the covers up to her chin and tucking her unrequited feelings away. Unrequited, then requited. Always just somehow…inconvenient.__

“I am, you know.” She looks down, the sudden lump in her throat surprising her. She tries not to blink, tries to hold onto unshed tears. “Your girl.”

“Hey,” he says softly. She looks up in spite of herself. There are six Oliver’s in a prism of tears. 

Wordlessly, he reaches out and gently removes her glasses and sets them down as if they’re made of spun sugar. His hand returns to her face, thumb brushing at the corner of her eye, bringing a teardrop trailing down over his lifeline.

Slowly—oh, God, so slowly—he leans in more and presses his mouth to the corner of other her eye, freeing a tear. 

Then again. 

He moves, rolls his head just enough that his forehead rests against hers. As if he wishes through this small contact she could absorb all that he thinks, feels.  
His voice is barely a whisper. “Sometimes…” He gives another breathy shake. “I believe you truly see me.”

“I do, Oliver. I do.”

Everything is blurry and nothing has ever been so clear.

“It feels like we’ve kissed more than once.” He does a breathy near-smile and shifts back. She’ll never grow tired of it.

“Sometimes once is all we get.” She lets words form in her head. “Can’t lose you now.” She shrugs, tries to make light, but it sounds far sadder to her own ears. “So, I’m going to hold on to you.”

“Tightly?” He looks briefly surprised at himself, tilts his head questioningly.

“This is usually the point where I wake up.”

She gasps – because she isn’t the one who said it.

Despite all those imagined conversations…situations…positions, she’s not prepared for this. This tone. This look. This sudden burst. It dims the candles, blots the stars, dares to present itself in the visage of _possible _.__

She is at a loss for words. As if language short circuits in her brain. 

There should be some great line to convey just how much he means to her and has always meant to her and all this whatever this is could be more and could be forever and that line’s had two years and several months to form and it hasn’t. And it won’t.

So, she settles for sliding off her jacket.

His breath hitches. She’s shaking. Hopes he can’t tell. Never looking away, he grabs the bottom of his shirt as he stands up. It goes over his head in one motion despite the buttons, tossing it next to her jacket. She’s up before it lands.

Removing all doubt, she closes the small gap between them. A stationary press turns to soft brushes over his mouth. Then, he draws her bottom lip between his own and he is kissing her back, and she is kissing him back, trying to show him this is real and they are real – that he is real and loved – while her mind is pretty much flooded with thoughts like _let me taste your tongue already _.__

The realness of it all seizes the air from her lungs. This is really him…in her arms, this is Oliver…Oliver who smells like sunshine and worn leather. 

Oliver who feels like home.

Tastes like coffee and want. 

Breaking away to breathe, she looks at him and then to her shoulders, tilts her head, silently suggests.

He holds his breath. She can tell because she’s holding hers.

A small tug. Slow rustle of fabric fills the room. His hands slide under and graze her torso, along her sides. He slides it up over her shoulders.

Silk is a splash on the floor.

His hands travel down her arms, unhurried, drag. Pale flesh inside her arms, almost tickles. Shoulders. 

One arm wraps around her, palm flat, fingers reach and barely press her back.

Then, suddenly, his other arm is under her thighs and she is weightless and the walls drift past. Her hands run in his hair. His breath plays against her neck.

Rain drops dot the open balcony. When they reach the bed, he turns to bring her on top of him as he settles back against the pillows.

She can feel him looking. Hard. Hands continue their trek. Soft.

Deliberate, measured, she brings her hands down him. Across shoulders that bear too much. 

Feels him swallow below her fingers, breathe beneath her arms.

He’s not moving. Waiting. Experiencing.

Her fingers do move, determined, to his chest.

He watches her, studies her studying him. Heated fingers on her thighs. He breathes, shuddering, watches her progress, follows her curves, thumbs runs smooth over her hips.

Her hand smoothes the planes of his chest, his breath shallow, barely registers. Over the old and fading bullet wound that brought him to her, above the cut that nearly took him from her.

Each finger spreads wide over the darkened tattoo spikes that splay above his heart, like a stain, another part of him that she does not really know. 

But she doesn’t need to.

She thinks of his words so many months ago. Words she wasn’t ready to hear so shortly after being pushed away. She wasn’t ready, but heard them anyway. _Whatever experiences you had to go through, I’m glad that you did. They shaped the person you are today. And you know how I feel about her _.__

She wants to say those words to him, though he’s probably even less willing to hear them. 

His eyes seem uncharacteristically unsure. Beneath her, he is laid bare. Raw.

Her hands cease, one above the scar that has just begun to heal and the other coming to rest over his heart. She kisses her palm and returns it there, to that open wound. The one that needs the most to heal.

She traces a single red-tipped finger from cut to burn to cut again, continuing as her voice finds her. “These are part…of what makes you who you are.” She swallows thickly, tries to choke back a lump that is threatening to form. 

“And you know…” 

Swallow again. Her thumb traces a mark along his lower rib. 

“You must know how I feel about you.”

His eyes slam shut. Fingers hold her almost imperceptibly tighter to him.

Indulging long fought fantasies, she runs fingers through his hair. Silk. Slides them over his shoulders. Steel. Traces the indents and sinews. Stone. The planes of his shoulder blades. Oak.

He hums, notes mingle with the wind.

Her fingers drag back up his abdomen, light scratches with red nails. 

He moans. It draws one from her.

He watches her again. She tries to memorize every time he shudders when a spot is touched—behind the ear, under the eye, along the jaw—or move her lips against him a certain way—wet along his neck, pressure over his pulse—and file it away. She reaches back and unhooks her bra.

Unbidden, the thought creeps in that this knowledge is moot. It is already history. It’s for remembering, in memoriam, to recall and feel less alone.

He presses her torso so closely against his chest that she can feel all the tension in his body. Every breath. Every vibration. 

Sliding a hand between them, she runs her hand flat along his heated length. A shiver wracks his frame. He wraps arms softly possessive behind her, fingers splayed just below the hem of her pants. She’s vaguely aware of his other hand as it skims her ass. Thumbs rub circles. Fingers dig. 

His peels her pants away, still holding her above him and his disappear during a kiss.

She sits up and slides down onto him, until there is no more, until she’s run out of her and he’s run out of him.

Eyes locked and sharing breath. It’s intense and tethered and she may forget to blink but she could no more look away than form a full thought. Or ignore this final thread that pieces them together there, connects them.

Forearms on his shoulders, hands behind his head, and feet held down at his sides. Tandem. Tense. Together.

Sounds flow from him, alter with their moves. Shift and hiss. Rock and moan.

Full and hot and perfect and show me what you want, what you like.

He arches back as he thrusts up into her down. 

His voice carries some form of desperation. Practically yells and loses his pace, himself.

He swells. Curses. Grinds into her as she presses onto him and then throbs and pulses and pushes. Gathers her up, whispers and pleads a promise into her skin.  
He clings to her as if he were slipping from a high branch, his breath harsh in her ear.

Her name.

As many times as she has heard him say it, it becomes vital to hear, to learn how he would says it in this moment of completion. 

A ragged whisper, and his breath catches, hips stutter and still deep within. His arms tense around her body as he groans out, low and coarse and reverent: Felicity. 

She wants to feel every change, swallow every sound, but embers inside her burn red hot, and then she’s too far gone, already begun the fall before him, praying his name and gasping for air.

Holding her close, he whispers into her skin, “I love you.”

“I love you right back.” She nods quickly, trying to shut off a sudden leaking notion that this may be the end when it feels so much more like a beginning.

He lifts her head. She hadn’t realized it’d fallen forward, melancholy moment held at bay. He weaves fingers within her hair slowly. Spinning gold.

She doesn’t notice who moves first, or if they move together, but they kiss soft and sweet, and she pledges she will remember him as he has been and is in this moment – this man, the real him, all of Oliver – every moment of every day until…

Felicity rolls, offering herself, and he slips into her from behind, holding her ass almost roughly, like he’s been wanting to sink in and anchor himself by it for as long as he can remember. Because he has. He tells her so when he drapes himself over her as his pace quickens, skin to skin and breathy, confessions spilling beside her ear.

After, as night goes down to day, her legs entwine with his. She nudges him over her and their third time is slow, reverent. Oliver’s arms slide under her shoulders and he cradles her face, watches every change as he angles to find where it makes her neck arch and breath catch. He brings her there again and again gradually, then relentless until she calls his name each time. Something fractures in her final cry and the way her heels dig into his spine finishes him.

He runs his lips up past her wrist and along her arm. It feels as though he traces unknown symbols faintly in the soft skin. Half kiss, half taste. When he reaches her neck, he looks up, gives that light smile and headshake like he’s part batting away troubles and part bewildered. 

As he falls asleep, that smile lingers, then becomes an echo of itself, then fades away.

Outside, a flash of distant lightening demands the storm not be forgotten. She won’t think about how they don’t have a future, that there will be no more times for tender reflection. This trip will end, and there will not be nights for exploring and days memorizing and, and, and… she thinks her heart stutters at the thought. 

The rhythm never evens out. 

If she sleeps at all, it is by accident. Instead, she watches the rise and fall of his chest. Sees how the fading candlelight plays along his scars, like lightning strikes to mark his trials. Hears small shifts as he breathes through parted lips when his sleep deepens. Damp rain-tinged air cloisters the room; she pulls a sheet to cover his cooled shoulder. 

This is the real hurt. Unrequited love is a familiar, singular, deep hurt. The move from unrequited to requited, it opens one up. Opens her up. A lifetime, a universe of potential, all embodied in the ebb and flow of shared emotions. 

Once requited, you never fully close. 

What was once a painful gouge of unrequited feelings that she could stitch back together and make herself whole - and spend until the end of days walking not in the universe that together could have been or simply limping through the stitched up plain of what fate never let happened - becomes excruciating once requited and cruelly removed.  
Emotions once returned fill every thought and vein, open up and surround like steam in a hot bath, petals in dawn.

And now that it’s being yanked away, she is millions or more countless nicks assaulted by even the gentlest breeze, bleeding out every pore. 

The footsteps of guards or regiment or whatever moniker these soulless bastard assassins presume to take can be heard in the hall outside. They stop short of the doorway. Beside her, Oliver stirs. 

She leans down, kissing his temple. “Don’t leave,” she mouths, inaudible.

His eyes flutter. 

Outside, a voice carries the knell over the storm. “It is time.”

Before she can process, before it registers that her knuckles have gone white against the sheet held to her chest, Oliver is up, dressed and breathing in the vanilla of her hair. This time when he says her name, the second syllable drops out as he swallows thickly.

She looks up at him, forces a watery smile. “You are stronger than all of them. You will still be you, because you’ve been through worse and you are still here.”

He nods, neither of them convinced. Like so many months ago, he turns and walks away, letting their hands touch until they can stretch no further.

“You need to let me…us go,” he says with his hand on the door. “I have to go… and I need you to tell me that you understand you can’t love what I will become and you’re going to forget me,” he pauses, rattling the doorknob. “Because I will forget myself.”

Until this, she thought she would do anything to make this easier for him, to make anything in his life easier because if anyone deserves a break it is Oliver, but she can’t. She just can’t give him this. The guilt of her failing has already begun to eat at her as she hears the words leave her mouth.

“Don’t ask me to say I won’t love you.”

He nods once, never letting himself look back, and leaves.

Anything that could be good is gone from the world with him; where once was lush green, now only thorns and nettles bloom.

And, unseen below the balcony, Felicity could swear she hears fresh nettle spires break the earth.

**Author's Note:**

> I wouldn’t necessarily consider this speculation fic because I rather think it would go more like: Eye sex – guilty talk – eye sex – actual sex – fin. But eye sex doesn’t translate very well to the written word…


End file.
